Annapolis Capital Editorial

The local parents, community members and health professionals who’ve organized as Start School Later have our appreciation — along with our sympathy.

What they have on their side is science, backed by the observations of anyone who knows how easy it is to find glassy stares and outright snoozing in first-period classrooms in county high schools.

They’re up against tradition and bureaucracy. County schools, like many school systems across the country, have built a huge administrative edifice on the calculation that it’s cheaper to stagger school starting times so that buses can be reused.

Parents loathe the idea of elementary school kids being out at bus stops in the pre-dawn darkness, even if younger children actually find it easier than teenagers to get up early. Thus, teens get to contribute to the economical functioning of county public schools by getting to high school in time for 7:17 a.m. start times — the earliest in the region.

So, it comes down to science and common sense versus tradition, bureaucracy and money. That’s usually not much of a contest. The Start School Later parents are like someone trying lever a boulder out of his path by using a toothpick.

They can at least point to accumulating evidence to refute the idea that they are just softies trying to coddle lazy teens. The experts keep insisting that teenagers need from 8 1/2 to 9 1/4 hours of sleep a night — an amount few of them actually get. And their innate biological rhythms, not to mention homework and after-school activities, make it very hard for them to get to sleep before 11 p.m. During the week, high-schoolers operate with a chronic sleep deficit, which spurs hyperactivity and other behavioral problems.

The National Sleep Foundation points to a report from the University of Minnesota, which measured what happened when the Minneapolis Public School District changed the starting time of seven high schools from 7:15 to 8:40 a.m. Attendance and enrollment rates increased, daytime alertness was up, and there was less student-reported depression.

The National Institutes of Health found a major drop in car crashes in a large school district in which start times were moved back by an hour. The Brookings Institution, in a report recommending later start times nationally, pointed to a study in which Air Force cadets assigned to start classes before 8 a.m. not only performed worse in those classes but in subsequent ones as well.

Actually, we think plenty of school administrators appreciate that 7:17 a.m. high school start times are absurd. But they don’t see how they can make changes now without upsetting the administrative apple cart, spending money the system doesn’t have, and risking a backlash from parents — and, indeed, from many teens — who don’t want a later school day that impinges on after-school activities.

Eventually, a way will be found to shift the status quo. But it will take years of patient lobbying by grass-roots groups like Start School Later.

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Start School Later, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to healthy, safe, equitable school hours. Start School Later, StartSchoolLater.net, and the Start School Later logo are the trademarks of Start School Later, Inc.